A la recherche du temps perdu
by chaletian
Summary: Bucky has bad days, when he's stiff and blank and says next to nothing (and that's in Russian). It gets better.


**A la recherche du temps perdu**

**By Liss Webster**

It gets better, eventually.

Oh, not necessarily the world or even the country. There will always be people wanting to set themselves above everyone else. Now it turns out there are aliens and gods and who the heck knows what else wanting to do the same. So, in that respect, nothing really gets better, though at least there is no more HYDRA waiting hidden inside SHIELD, coiled and silent. Steve kinda thinks though, maybe, there's bound to be something similar somewhere. He probably woulda been more optimistic about that, but he's been around the block a time or two now. People like power, and too often that doesn't turn out too good.

But, well, Steve can't save the world, all that old film reel aside. He – they – the Avengers – they try and do their bit, and Steve's fine with that. Say what you like about Tony Stark – and, don't get him wrong, there's a whole lot Steve could say about Tony Stark, very little of it suitable for mixed company – but he's a guy who strips the bullshit off of everything, and Steve feels a little better, knowing every time they go in somewhere Tony and JARVIS have been first, sauntering through the – whatever-it-is – the information highway, making sure the operation is legit, making sure the Avengers haven't been tricked into doing someone else's dirty business. They're all tired of that.

So, it's OK, really. And it's good – really, really good – because Bucky is back. He's not quite Bucky of old, not the man he used to be seventy years ago, but Steve reckons no-one is the man they were seventy years ago. He's certainly not. It was harder, at first, when the Winter Soldier… When he first… It was hard, and Sam had done a lot of talking about never stepping in the same river twice and Sam had been great.

Bucky remembers some stuff, sometimes. One day, in the height of summer, Steve had put some sandwiches and pop in a bag, and they had lain out in the park, under the trees, eyes squinting in the dappled sunlight, and they had sleepily talked about baseball, and it was as if no time had vanished at all, none at all, just Brooklyn voices in the park, talking baseball, with the sunshine too hot to argue.

Sometimes Bucky has bad nights, and is stiff and blank. He doesn't talk much, usually only in Russian, so only if Natasha's there. Steve learns Russian, which maybe helps a little. Steve, if not Bucky. Just being able to do something helps. Once, Bucky had a series of bad nights, and Steve woke up one morning to find him gone. Steve's mother had always said to him that if you loved something, it would come back to you. Steve loved his mother, but he wasn't sure that applied to your brainwashed best friend. Turned out it did, of course. At least, Bucky came back.

It gets better, is what Steve focuses on. The world, maybe not. Or maybe it does, a little. Maybe with HYDRA no longer able to cause trouble in quite the same way, things do get a little better, a little less tense. And Steve respected Fury, yes, but he has more faith in Phil Coulson's rectitude (though even Coulson is a little different these days, but you can't step in the same river twice, Sam always says), so maybe things will be better.

Bucky is better than he was. He can talk to people. Tony invites them to a barbecue, complaining that no-one else ever has Avengers parties and why does he have to do all the heavy-lifting and why does no-one ever pay any attention to him. None of them pays any attention to him, but Steve watches Bucky eat a hotdog, listening to Bruce explain something complicated with skewers, and Pepper smiles and says, "It looks like Bucky's doing well."

Steve nods, and says, "Yeah," and watches Bucky and thinks that this isn't right. Everything to do with Bucky – Bucky himself, and people's reactions to Bucky – are all wrong. Everyone's careful and gentle and kind, like Bucky is some broken bird that Steve has found and been keeping in a tissue box. Steve wants them to see the Bucky he knew, he wants desperately for them to know that man, bold and brave and strong, not someone to be pitied, but someone to be envied.

Steve says – he says something, he's not sure what, and ducks back into Tony's ridiculous house because it's not like everyone else needs him bringing the party down with his existential angst (as he has previously been informed when he apparently did just that). He sits in the living room, and thinks how easy it would be get JARVIS to rig something up and show him all those old photographs you can find on Google, him and Bucky and Peggy and the others. All of them, frozen in black and white, old days dead and gone, and _damn_ it he is maudlin today. And Steve laughs at himself, because honest to God, what else can a guy do?

He sits there a while, and he tries not to think about his old life, because he can't get it back and the world has moved on. He has a life here, now, and it's mostly OK. No, honestly, in a lot of ways it's better, though in a lot of ways it's worse, so… His life is OK now, and Bucky is alive and different, but that's OK too, because they've both got a lot of mileage on them, but they can talk about baseball in the sunshine. And if Steve wishes that his friends could see the Bucky he used to know – well, that Bucky is gone too, and Steve needs to accept that. After all, skinny Steve Rogers who used to get beat up in alleyways – that Steve's gone as well.

It gets darker and someone's turned on some music and Steve thinks he's spent enough time being maudlin. He goes back outside, to where it's lit with paper lanterns and some kind of fiendishly complicated electrical set-up that Tony probably designed in ten minutes in his bathtub, and as he gets there, Darcy, who is an assistant to Jane, who is a scientist of some description not engaged in the building of super-soldiers, wolf-whistles at Bucky, who is dancing with Natasha.

It… Steve has seen this scene he doesn't know how many times, Bucky dancing with some girl, another one or two or three watching covetously from the sidelines, Steve invisibly watching them. He thinks the years should vanish, till they're in a dive bar in Brooklyn or one of those French places, but. But. It's a warm night, and Tony's ridiculous lighting is kind of impressive, and Natasha always looks so beautiful when she dances, and Steve isn't anywhere but here and now, watching Bucky swing Natasha around, a broad grin on his face, one real arm and one prosthetic, both visible beneath his rolled-up shirt sleeves. In the distance, Steve can hear Sam talking to Clint Barton, and Tony is pretty much constantly audible, at this moment unintelligibly discussing engineering or something with Bruce. Someone presses a beer into his hand, hard and cold and damp with condensation. He can smell the remains of the barbecue.

Steve closes his eyes, tips back his head, breathes in the night air, cool and calm. He can hear his friends talking. Listens as Sam complains about Bucky hogging the girl, and Bucky laughing at him, though tomorrow it might be a bad day and Bucky will speak next to nothing at all, and that only in Russian.

It's getting better.


End file.
